2025 AFL Season Previews: Fremantle
It probably shouldn't be this hard.
Heading over to Western Australia for preview number six.
2024 ladder position: 10th (12 wins, 10 losses, 1 draw)
2024 best-and-fairest: Caleb Serong
Senior coach: Justin Longmuir
Story of the season
Fortified with a more mature sense of what it takes to succeed in the modern AFL, Freo entered the season with a steely determination to right the wrongs of 2023. Things began very well. The Dockers were 3-0 after dispatching Brisbane, North Melbourne and an abominable Adelaide. Two narrow defeats at Adelaide Oval – the first a hugely controversial 10-point loss to Carlton in Gather Round – were acceptable. Losing by six goals in the Derby was not. It was a result which seemed to encapsulate Fremantle’s worst traits under Justin Longmuir; stagnant and indecisive with ball in hand, prone to turning it over in their own back half, and surprisingly meek. A run of seven wins in 10 games – including an exhilarating victory at the SCG to snap the Swans’ months-long winning streak – had the Dockers looking hopefully in the direction of the top four. They were third, just percentage behind Brisbane, at the conclusion of Round 20. Three straight defeats, including a heartbreaker against Essendon, combined with Carlton’s loss to St Kilda on the final day of the Home & Away season, gave the Dockers a very simple task: beat Port, in Perth, and play finals. Deprived of captain Alex Pearce and breakout key forward Josh Treacy, they couldn’t do it. The bright taste of promise had once again curdled into the bitter taste of failure. Flowers into ashes. All told, Fremantle were the second-biggest disappointment of 2024.
Summary of game style
Fremantle under Longmuir are careful when they have the ball and careful when they don’t. Their elite on-ball brigade wins the ball in close and then moves it to the outside of the contest, where they patiently move the ball by hand (they ranked second among all teams in 2024 for handballs and second-last for kicks as a share of total disposals) to fashion high-value scoring opportunities. You’ll often see the Dockers defending with the ball, chipping the ball around to keep it away from their opponents on a wing or at half-back. Their conservatism, though, is a double-edged sword. Freo are defensively solid but poor at moving it from their defensive 50 to attacking 50 – both in terms of speed and efficiency – and very poor at forcing opposition turnovers (16th for opposition turnovers and 18th for pressure acts). Justin Longmuir keeps the handbrake on for longer than most other coaches.
List changes
In:
Murphy Reid (2024 National Draft, pick #17)
Charlie Nicholls (2024 National Draft, pick #34)
Jaren Carr (2024 National Draft, pick #63 – father/son)
Aiden Riddle (2024 Rookie Draft)
Quinton Narkle (Supplementary Selection Period)
Shai Bolton (trade – Richmond)
Out:
Tom Emmett (delisted)
Ethan Hughes (delisted)
Max Knobel (delisted)
Sebit Kuek (delisted)
Ethan Stanley (delisted)
Matt Taberner (delisted)
Conrad Williams (delisted)
Josh Corbett (retired)
List profile
Number of top-10 draft picks: eight (T-4th)
Average age at Opening Round: 24.5 (11th)
Average number of games played: 67.9 (13th)
Fremantle already had a good list, and, by directly addressing some areas of mild deficiency, Hayden Young, Josh Treacy and Shai Bolton have elevated it to perhaps the best in the AFL. Young’s ability to break out the front of stoppages provides a point of difference to what was previously a slightly vanilla midfield. Treacy had a major breakout season, combining excellent marking with dead-eye accuracy. However, Bolton might prove the most important addition to the 18. His unique combination of creativity, skill and speed should flourish in a defensively stable team in need of a jolt. He could be the player that wins Freo their first flag.
However, as good as this list is, it’s not perfect. I see two weaknesses, both closely intertwined with Justin Longmuir’s tactics. The first is that the backline doesn’t contribute enough in possession. For all their qualities, the likes of Luke Ryan and Jordan Clark often over-possess, allowing the opposition to settle into their defensive structure and force low-percentage options like long kicks from wide positions to forward contests (not Fremantle’s strength – they were 18th for contested marks in 2024) or over-elaboration by hand (the Dockers ranked first for handball receives but only ninth for forward half score differential). A team as talented as Freo shouldn't look as constipated as they often do with the ball.
The second “weakness”, again a combination of personnel and tactics, is the defensive quality of their smalls and mediums. There’s a lot to admire about them individually, but collectively they can’t consistently apply enough forward pressure to trouble their opponents. The Dockers were 14th for forward-50 ground ball gets in 2024, and 12th for tackles inside 50 (although Shai Bolton is likely to help those numbers improve). As a result, Fremantle often struggled to generate the repeat entries that are needed to unsettle stubborn defences. It should be said though, that mediocre statistical performance across traditional forward pressure and ground ball metrics is at least partly a function of how Fremantle play under Longmuir. More on that in the pessimism section!
I think these are ultimately solvable problems, or at least not so significant enough that they should obstruct Fremantle’s search for their maiden Premiership. The bottom line: bar a couple of spots in the starting 18, this is a great list.
Line rankings
Defence: Above Average
Midfield: Elite
Forward: Above Average
Ruck: Elite*
The case for optimism
Justin Longmuir is sitting on a gold mine. Serious Footy People were already lauding Freo’s list a year ago. And then Hayden Young blossomed into one of the game’s best attacking midfielders (he was the 11th-highest rated player in the AFL in 2024), Josh Treacy broke out to become one of its best key forwards, and the Dockers traded in Shai Bolton (the 17th-highest rated player in the league in 2022 and 19th-highest rated in 2023).
The Dockers are in an extremely enviable list position – they are good, and they are young. Caleb Serong only just turned 24. Hayden Young hasn’t yet. Luke Jackson won’t turn 25 until two days after this year’s Grand Final. Shai Bolton is still just 26. Jye Amiss and Josh Treacy barely have 100 games between them. I could go on. The point is that the Dockers have a quality young core that’s already played a fair bit of footy together. That’s pretty much the blueprint for sustained success in the AFL. And there’s no reason they can’t maintain their current level, or even go to the next, for at least the next five years.
I spent a fair bit of last year’s preview lamenting Fremantle’s player retention issues. Well, that doesn’t look like an issue anymore. Quite the opposite. With all due respect to Lachie Shultz, if I were a Dockers fan, I’d rather have Shai Bolton and be reading weekly updates about Kysaiah Pickett texting Luke Jackson telling him that he’ll be playing in purple next year. Provided they manage their salary cap responsibly, the Dockers are now in the position where they can – should – largely forgo the draft for a few years and instead focus on bundling up picks to trade in players to address the few problem positions they have left. Pickett would be a brilliant start. He is elite in the precise position where Freo are probably still weakest.
I’ve added an asterisk next to my rating of Fremantle’s ruck division simply because of Sean Darcy’s persistent injury issues. Luke Jackson might be a unicorn, but he’s not as good a pure ruck as the burly Victorian.
Coaching matters. Tactics matter. I wouldn’t have started this newsletter if I thought otherwise. But talent is still the principal determinant of outcomes in the AFL. The Dockers have never had more of it – and might have more than any other club.
The case for pessimism
I’m not convinced Justin Longmuir knows how to solve his team’s tactical issues – because they’ve been largely the same ones that have plagued his team for two years now.
In a nutshell, the Dockers are far too conservative in both phases of play. This conservatism allows them to remain robust but constrains their attacking potential. You can see it on both sides of the ball. Starting with the ball – the Dockers prefer to move upfield by hand, generating long chains to create space. In 2024, they ranked first for handball receives, 16th for metres gained per disposal, and 17th for kicks as a share of total disposals. And they’re careful. Despite ranking fourth for total disposals, the Dockers conceded the fourth-fewest turnovers and the fewest clangers. Getting lots of the ball and not losing it – sounds great, right? But despite this, the Dockers were only 10th for inside-50 entries. That’s because they’re too slow and risk-averse in possession. No team needed more possessions to move the ball from defensive 50 to attacking 50. Too often, by the time Freo had finally gotten the ball down there (if it made it at all), the opposition defence was well set-up to repel the attack. The boldness (or lack of it) of Fremantle’s ball movement is closely tied to how their midfield is performing in the clearance game. When they feel confident of starting with the ball in good positions, they’ll be more enterprising. It’s when they need to build from deep that they are fearful of being pinned in their back half. That risk aversion, ultimately born of a fear of losing the ball, made them too careful, too unimaginative, and too easy to corral into congestion or low-value parts of the ground.
The other half of the explanation for why Freo underwhelm as an attacking force is because they’re too passive defensively. If there’s a single stat which encapsulates the downside of Longmuir’s style, it’s this: the Dockers were 16th for opposition turnovers in 2024, neck-and-neck with West Coast and only just ahead of North Melbourne. They were also 17th for turnover differential and intercept possession differential (in both cases, ahead of only North). It’s as if Longmuir wants to eliminate transitions from his side’s games. But that feels increasingly out of step with how modern footy is played. Or consider the tactical trend from another sport. The architects of the high-transition style in modern soccer – Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Ralf Rangnick – all emphasise the importance of trying to win the ball back (after losing it) in fewer than 10 seconds, because doing so maximises the chances of the opposition defence being out of position, which therefore makes it easier to generate shots. Longmuir’s reluctance to take risks means his team is too inert in both the attacking and defensive phases. It’s not just a suboptimal tactic – it’s also poor entertainment. I don’t know if Champion Data keeps stats about how much of a game is played between the 50-metre arcs, but I’d bet that Fremantle would be very high up the list.
All of this is to say that Justin Longmuir needs to shed some of his conservatism, trust his defenders to be more aggressive, his midfielders to move the ball quicker, and his key forwards to create and convert opportunities. According to data analyst James Ives, Freo went 5-0 in 2024 in games where they had more intercepts than their opponents. Longmuir needs to find a sustainable way to force the opposition into turnovers! But there's one big caveat to all this: Shai Bolton. He might just make most of what I’ve written above redundant. He is one of the best circuit-breakers in footy. He does unpredictable things quickly and well. Whether in midfield or forward 50, his dynamism could transform how the Dockers (and their opponents) move the ball.
But even though Bolton might solve most of Freo’s problems, he might not do it right away. And the Dockers have a tough first month – opening with a trip to Geelong, before games against Sydney, West Coast, and the Western Bulldogs. The fact that those three games are all at Optus Stadium softens the blow, but the Dockers are still projected to have the fourth-hardest draw of any club over the course of the season.
Freo’s list is stacked. But it’s also slightly thin in key positions. The Dockers looked impotent when Josh Treacy missed the final three games of last season. First choice key defensive pairing Alex Pearce and Brennan Cox didn’t play much footy last year. The latter is returning from a severe hamstring tear, and the former is already injured. And Sean Darcy is a great ruck but also one who constantly finds new ways to get injured. It’s not so much a question of what will happen if these important players miss lots of games. We know what happens when they do. It’s not great.
The issues I’ve highlighted here are more of a cause for pessimism for Longmuir specifically than for Fremantle generally. If he and his assistant coaches can’t work out how to make this Freo side a flag contender, he’ll be relieved of his duties. The quality of Fremantle’s list means the Dockers will probably be fine. Longmuir’s coaching career may not be.
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Breakout player
Hayden Young was probably the most obvious breakout candidate of any player in the whole competition last year, so I don’t deserve any plaudits for that. He’s now probably Fremantle’s best player (top three, at worst) and very plausibly top-20 in the AFL. This year, I’ll nominate Josh Draper. He emerged as a surprisingly important member of the Freo backline, popping up with important intercept marks at key times. His agility and marking ability hold him in good stead. The next step is to become more damaging with ball in hand. A word also for Nathan O’Driscoll, who’s so far struggled to break into a deep Dockers midfield but could make his mark this season.
Most important player
I wrote an entire paragraph about how Freo’s most important player is Caleb Serong. Back-to-back best-and-fairest winner, a clearance machine, career-high goals. And still more room to grow. And then a subscriber who graciously agreed to review a draft of this piece successfully persuaded me that it’s probably already Josh Treacy. Fremantle have midfielders who can do what Serong does, about 80% as well. They don’t have anyone who can do Treacy’s job half as well – as evidenced by Freo’s (and Longmuir’s) utter failure to find ways to generate alternative ways of scoring when he was out injured for the final three games of last season.
Biggest question to answer
The same as the one I posed 12 months ago: can Justin Longmuir solve Freo’s tactical issues? If not all the raw ingredients were there this time last year, they certainly are now. Adding the dynamism and forward running of Young and Bolton is enough to make the mouth water. But Longmuir still needs to make it work.
What success looks like
Given the addition of significant X-factor in the form of Shai Bolton, big improvements from within from the likes of Treacy and Young, and incremental improvement from one of the league’s youngest core groups, the Dockers and their supporters must look up the ladder. I think it’s now getting to the stage where no less than a top-four finish and a prelim will do.
In a nutshell
The Dockers are overflowing with talent everywhere except, perhaps, the coach’s box. After two years of disappointment, the excuses have been exhausted. This team is young and supremely talented. It’s time for Longmuir to turn them into winners.
Agree? Think I’m a fool who’s biased against the Dockers? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Nothing makes me happier than seeing Josh Draper shown some love
Was funny reading this thinking Freo play conservative like 2000s EPL teams and you drop the reference to modern tactics